Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!know!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!uunet!ora!ora!daemon From: rodney@ipl.rpi.edu (Rodney Peck II) Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Re: Smoking and Abortion Message-ID: Date: 4 Aug 90 04:34:24 GMT References: <1895@apctrc.UUCP> Sender: ambar@ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz) Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY Lines: 27 Approved: ambar@ora.com uunet!apctrc!crx34!zrra07@ncar.ucar.EDU ("Randall R. Appleton") writes: >It is well known (outside of Jessie Helm's little mind) that smoking >is bad for unborn babies. Therefore, I ask the folloing question: If >one is pro-life, and wants legislation to keep these unborn babies >from being murdered, should one also want legislation to keep these >same babies from the life-long harm that pre-natal smoking can cause? Sorry I don't have specifics, but that's what the net is all about... I remember hearing about a woman who was tried for manslaughter or some such thing for the damage she had caused her child by drinking during her pregnancy. This idea seems to be along the same lines as what you are saying. So, unless I dreamed this happening, there are actually people out there who _are_ holding women responsible for this. I suppose there is another one of those fine lines somewhere between a woman who drinks and smokes heavily during pregnancy and gives birth to a child who dies before it is a year old and a woman who doesn't realize that she is pregnant having a spontaneous miscarriage before the first month is up (therefore probably not even realizing it has happened) from heavy physical exertion or some other such thing. Where that line is drawn will, unfortunately, be determined by what the general public thinks the abstract woman should be doing with her time. -- Rodney